In case you haven’t heard, the Red Sox are in a slump right now. Since the calendar flipped from August to September, they’ve put together a woefully frustrating 3-11 record. Their one-half game lead over the Yankees for the division has turned into a four-and-a-half game deficit. Their nine game lead over the Rays for the Wild Card has shrunk to three games. Making matters worse, the Rays are in town this weekend for a crucial four game set that holds the potential of drastically changing the American League playoff landscape. What’s a member of the Boston sports media to do? If you’re Tony Massorotti of the Boston Globe , you write an overly emotional, trolling article about the current state of the Red Sox that’s purposely designed to fuel the panic of Red Sox Nation.
“We’ve got 15 games left and we’re up, what, four now?” second baseman Dustin Pedroia told reporters after the win. “We’re all taking it like it’s the playoffs now.”
“So there you go. The Red Sox themselves understand what they have done. October is a grind to begin with, the games taxing and grueling, something the Sox know in this millennium as well as anybody. Beginning in October 2003, the Red Sox have played 57 postseason games, more than any franchise in baseball but the New York Yankees (65). And yet this year, thanks to the schizophrenic tendencies of this team, the Sox decided to start October early, recklessly tossing away a downright fluffy lead in the playoff race like some spoiled collection of silver spoons..
“Recklessly tossing away a downright fluffy lead in the playoff race like some spoiled collection of silver spoons?” Really Mazz? Really? Yes, you’re absolutely right. I’m sure their September troubles are a direct result of the team turning into an entitled group of Paris Hilton wannabe divas. Yup, that’s exactly the case. In fact, that gives credence to the rumors I heard about strutting around the locker room wearing a tiara, andcarrying a Pomeranian in his brand new Fendi man purse. I guess it wasn’t a rumor after all. Case closed! Nothing to see here.
The only problem with Massorotti’s argument is that it’s…well, “fluffy” and lacking any shred of substance. The Red Sox aren’t struggling because of feelings of entitlement. They’re struggling because injuries have decimated their starting rotation. Sinceandsustained their most recent injuries, the rotation has consisted of,,,, and. Outside of Lester, which one of those guys are you psyched about seeing on the mound? The struggling Lackey, or one of the three replacement level starters? Exactly. Wake can barely get through five innings without crumbling; Miller should be the bullpen’s designated LOOGY; and Weiland’s ceiling is either a shut down reliever or a back-of-the-rotation starter for a second tier team. The only reason they’re even starting is because Terry Francona has lacked other options. Is Mazz really suggesting the team would be performing the same way if Beckett and Bedard were healthy?
“In retrospect, isn’t that really what this latest stretch, this entire season, has been about? The Red Sox take the playoffs for granted now, as if the regular season is a necessary evil. They spent the winter tossing around money like a crew of drunken sailors, then showed up for work expecting everything to take care of itself. Then the Sox came out and went 2-10 to start the season, a downright embarrassing beginning that sounded alarms and immediately revealed the potentially fatal flaw in this club.
The Sox know how good they are.
And as a result, they are far too willing to go on auto pilot and coast.”
Again with the hyperbole. The Red Sox didn’t toss around “money like a crew of drunken sailors” this past offseason. In fact, the front office spent their money pretty shrewdly. They traded prospects for, and promptly signed him to a market rate seven year $154M extension that looks tremendous at the moment. I doubt anyone wants to reverse that deal. ‘s seven year $142M free agent deal has been much maligned, but it’s still way too early to judge the deal. After a disastrous April, he’s shaken off his struggles to post a pretty respectable .279/.312/.450 triple slash line. While his performance hasn’t been ideal, he’s been a lot better than people think. It certainly hasn’t been worthy of the criticism he’s received from people incapable of looking beyond his April influenced statistics. has struggled with nagging injuries, and hasn’t performed well when he has pitched. Still, considering the three and four year deals being given to inferior relievers over the winter, getting a closer quality pitcher for two years is more than reasonable. has been solid since returning from the DL during the first half, and certainly worthy of his relatively modest salary. Lastly, the extension given to Buchholz looks like a pretty sweet deal for the team; especially if he can remain healthy. All-in-all, Theo had a pretty solid offseason. Plus, it’s not like he agreed to take the corpse of Vernon Wells and $81M of the $86M remaining on his contract like a certain west coast General Manager…
Furthermore, Mazz doesn’t seem to understand that lots of good teams go through a rough stretches over the course of the season. Occasionally, it happens multiple times. The Yankees stumbled through a 3-10 stretch from May 3-16. The Braves just finished an awful 3-9 stretch earlier this month. Even the Phillies went through an ugly 5-10 stretch in mid-May. It happens. It doesn’t mean the team is slacking or on “auto pilot.” (Although that could happen.) Injuries, luck, and bad timing (i.e. several players slumping at once) can all factor into the equation.
“In the big picture, the mere fact that this is still a race at this point is a negative. The Red Sox have a payroll approaching $180 million this year. The Rays are closer to $50 million. Josh Beckett started talking about a 100-win season during spring training, before the Sox even played a game, and many of us took that as a sign that the Sox were not running from their potential. Rather, they were embracing it, prepared to steamroll their way through a league in which there were maybe two remotely comparable rosters.
Instead, the opposite happened. The Sox took their talent for granted. It is one thing to endure mediocre stretches in a baseball season that is, by definition, seemingly interminable; it is another to fall asleep out of sheer cockiness and boredom. Boston’s lapses, if that is what we choose to call them, have come with annoying frequency and consistency. They weren’t ready to start the year. They dozed off against bad teams. They all but shut it down when they thought they had a playoff spot locked up.”
I’m not going to sit here and tell you that the Red Sox haven’t been streaky. They have been. In fact, Jacob Peterson of Beyond the Box score in an article he wrote this past June. Still, do we know why they’re streaky? I don’t. And I certainly don’t like Massorotti’s baseless assumption that the Red Sox (or any other team for that matter) is playing down to their competition because of “cockiness” or “boredom.” There’s absolutely no way for him to prove his assertion.
Additionally, who are these bad teams the Red Sox “dozed off against?” This season, they have a losing record against six teams: the Rangers, Indians, Rays, Phillies, Padres, and Pirates. The Phillies and Rangers are both leading their respective divisions; the Indians did their damage against the Red Sox early in the season when they were red hot; and the Rays, despite their position in the standings, are one of the top eight teams in baseball. The only two teams Mazz could possibly gripe about are the Padres and Pirates who the Red Sox are a combined 2-4 against this season. Should they have performed better? Probably, but again, every team goes through a bad stretch. Everyone else though, including the Yankees (11-4) and Tigers (5-2), the Red Sox have beaten consistently. Had Mazz done the research, he probably might have realized this.
“For sure, this team can grind when it must, no one more so than second baseman Pedroia, who again grabbed the Sox by the collar last night and gave a good, hard shake. Pedroia was a high draft choice, to be sure, but he is also a 5-foot-nothing, 100-and-nothing-pound second baseman who has been disproving people his entire life. Take Pedroia’s intangibles out of the equation (along with those of a select few others) and the 2011 Red Sox might be in the running for the Worst Team Money Could Buy, a collection of fat cats who too often think they can win by just showing up.”
I love Pedroia just as much as the next Red Sox fan, but I don’t see how his intangibles have anything to do with Tuesday’s 18-6 win. (Perhaps it had an affect, albeit a small one.) The Red Sox won the game because Pedroia andhad huge games on the field ; not because of a nebulous, intangible ability to will their team to victory. If a player (or group of players) had that ability, don’t you think they’d do it more frequently? Furthermore, what was Pedroia waiting for? The Red Sox had a five game losing streak! Was he too busy/lazy to “turn it on” before Tuesday?
Massorotti doesn’t have an answer to that question. Why? Because people only point to intangibles when they either feel it’s convenient, or want to explain something they don’t understand. In Pedroia’s case, it’s both. It’s convenient to point to Pedroia’s intangibles because it helps his argument. The Red Sox are lazy and complacent, and it too Pedroia’s desire and will to win to push the team over the top. It certainly makes for a great story, doesn’t it?
It also allows Mazz to explain how a “5-foot-nothing, 100-and-nothing-pound second baseman who has been disproving people his entire life” can play baseball so well. It’s almost as if it never crossed his mind that maybe Pedroia’s just a supremely talented baseball player. While yes, he’s had to overcome prejudicial obstacles throughout his amateur and professional careers, it’s not like he’s a mediocre middle infielder who was on the brink of being forced out of baseball like. Pedroia’s a completely different type of player. Trying to fit him into the same box is incredibly unfair.
The postseason is a crapshoot. While talent plays a big role in determining the champion, luck is also a significant factor. How else can you explain the 1960 World Series when the Pirates knocked off the heavily favored Yankees in seven games despite being outscored 55-27? Or more recently, how could an upstart Marlins team knock off the heavily favored San Francisco Giants, Chicago Cubs, and New York Yankees to win an improbable second World Series in seven seasons? Or how could an 83-win Cardinal team that stumbled into the postseason manage to win the World Series, as they did in 2006. Or take the 2010 San Francisco Giants. They rode their rotation’s dominant forces by the Braves, Phillies, and Rangers. In a short series anything can happen. A bad bounce here, and dominant pitching performance there, and the complexion of an entire series can change. In the playoffs, small sample variance rules the world.
“By contrast, this Sox team seems far less interested in winning a World Series championship than in being given one, which cannot help but evoke comparisons to the 2004 Yankees. Despite an offseason dominated by the Red Sox prior to that season, the Yankees won the division with 101 victories. Then the Yankees jumped to a 3-0 lead in the ALCS. One year removed from a stunning, comeback win over the Red Sox in the 2003 ALCS, the Yankees thought they had another trip to the World Series all but locked up, one more victory over Boston serving as nothing more than a formality.
Of course, the Yankees never got that win. They gave away that series as much as the Red Sox came back and won it. Yankee arrogance was as much as a factor in that collapse as any shortage of pitching, something we all said at that time because we believed the Red Sox wanted it more, because the Red Sox were hungrier, because the Red Sox were driven.”
Going into the 2004 ALCS,, Jon Leiber, Kevin Brown, andwere their top four starters. Honestly, the fact the Yankees even went up 3-0 was pretty lucky; especially when you factor the Red Sox featuredandat the top of their rotation. The Yankees lost, not because of so-called arrogance, but because their pitching wasn’t very good. Outside of a solid performance by Leiber in Game 2, Mike Mussina collapsed in the seventh inning of Game 1 and Kevin Brown straight up struggled in Game 3. Had it not been offensive outbursts in both games, it’s possible they don’t win either game. Games 4-7 were all about the Red Sox outpitching the Yankees. That’s it. The talk about the Red Sox’s ”hunger” and “drive” makes for a great story, but it’s all fluff. They didn’t do anything during those four games that lead me to believe they were playing beyond their talent levels.
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